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A Persuasive Robot to Stimulate Energy Conservation: The Influence of Positive and Negative Social Feedback and Task Similarity on Energy-Consumption Behavior

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Abstract

This research explored the persuasive effects on behavior of social feedback by a robotic agent. In two experiments, participants could save on energy while carrying out washing tasks on a simulated washing machine. In both experiments, we tested the persuasive effects of positive and negative social feedback and we compared these effects to factual feedback, which is more widely used. Results of both studies indicated that social feedback had stronger persuasive effects than factual feedback. Furthermore, results of both studies suggested an effect of feedback valence indicated by more economic behavior following negative feedback (social or factual) as compared to positive feedback. Overall, the strongest persuasive effects were exerted by negative social feedback. In addition, results of Experiment 2 indicated that task similarity increased the persuasive effects of negative feedback. The implications for persuasive robotic agent theory and design are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Therefore, these technologies might also (more correctly) be labeled as “Behavior Change Support Systems” [22]. However, because the original label is so well known, in the current research we use the label Persuasive Technology.

  2. We used this reference amount (calculated over all participants in the study, thereby including all forms of feedback) because our aim was to compare the persuasive power of different forms of feedback to one another.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to Frans Jansen and Susanne Tak for running the experiments, and to Maaike Roubroeks, and the Persuasive Technology Lab Group at TUe for the fruitful discussions about this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human-Technology Interaction, Eindhoven University of Technology, Den Dolech 2, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    J. Ham & C. J. H. Midden

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  1. J. Ham
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  2. C. J. H. Midden
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Correspondence to J. Ham.

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Ham, J., Midden, C.J.H. A Persuasive Robot to Stimulate Energy Conservation: The Influence of Positive and Negative Social Feedback and Task Similarity on Energy-Consumption Behavior. Int J of Soc Robotics 6, 163–171 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-013-0205-z

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